My Heart: The Greatest Challenge
In my Church Music Materials and Methods course at NGU, we’re about to tackle the last unit, a unit I’ve titled “Worship in the Church.” Our readings will be from Bob Kauflin’s Worship Matters. My colleague Dr. Cheryl Greene gave me Kauflin’s book as a gift last Christmas. There’s so much good in it, I decided to use it as a text for the course (though calling it a “text” seems a real disservice).
Kauflin is speaking to worship leaders in chapter 2, titled “My Heart: What Do I Love?” He makes the statement that the greatest challenges are not in the details of worship:
Your greatest challenge is what you yourself bring to the platform every Sunday. Your heart. For years we’ve read about or experienced firsthand the “worship wars”—conflicts over music styles, song selections, and drums. But far too little has been said about the worship wars going on inside us. And they’re much more significant.
Throughout Scripture, idolatry is the greatest snare the people of God encounter.
Kauflin asks us to try and spot the idols around us. He lists what some of these idols might be: material comforts, financial security, sensual pleasures, electronic gadgets, reputation, power, control. He candidly relates a time in his life when he found himself worshiping the idols of fame, approval, and praise. All of these are unfortunate distractions, and some of them are outright sin. But as I read Kauflin’s words, I found myself asking, “Do these particular sins form the root of the problem? Or is there something more insidious, some larger idol that, due to its sheer size is perhaps harder to perceive?”
The question arose thanks to a sermon delivered at our church on Sunday. The message was on the sufficiency of Scripture, and the minister read from II Timothy 3. “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.”
At one point in the sermon Dr. Agan asked us whether our lives demonstrated that portions of Scripture were insufficient for us. I cringed, expecting him to wield those rusty, old cudgels that were so overused in my earlier life: What standard was I failing to uphold? What rule was I breaking? What niggling priority was out of whack? But what has so often been the case since having left that old works-based system was true once again this past Sunday. Rather than foregrounding those small-minded matters, Dr. Agan instead asked, “Have you found that Scripture is sufficient when you find yourself tempted to sin but not sufficient to free you from guilt? Or is the reverse true? Do you find release from your guilt in Scripture but fail to claim its power in the moment of temptation?”
I cringed again… not with my usual reflex, bracing to withstand the use of Scripture as a weapon of assault, but because the minister had hit the nail on the head. My chief problem, the larger problem from which all my other problems arise, is the sin of self-sufficiency. It’s that sin that caused Adam’s original fall. It’s our common lot as humans to believe we can make it apart from God. We believe that our goodness can earn favor in God’s sight and assuage those inner pangs of guilt. We believe that we can, in our own power, resist Satan’s attacks. If we avoid those “big” sins–like the ones that Kauflin enumerates–we think we’re pretty much okay. But those other sins are only symptomatic of something more insidious: the tendency to go our own way. No wonder Christ refers to us as sheep. We sometimes witlessly wander off; at other times we’re intentionally wayward. But it all amounts to creatures who, by sin of omission or commission, go our own way, ignoring the hand of the Shepherd.
Whether in the moment of temptation or in the grip of guilt, Christ stands with arms spread wide to receive us, not to strike or condemn, not to chide or to shame. Our goodness does not impress Him; our badness does not surprise Him. With the loving, enfolding arms of a Shepherd as kind as our Savior, why would we choose to do anything other than follow?
Comments
Mark Rosedale (Nov 11, 2009)
Thanks Grant I needed that. The last paragraph really hits home.